


Smart, Not Fast

by viceindustrious



Category: Body of Lies (2008)
Genre: Advent Challenge 2010, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceindustrious/pseuds/viceindustrious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the eighth of December and sixty-eight degrees outside. Roger used to miss snow, this year he's glad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smart, Not Fast

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day eight of the adventchallenge.Prompt: Cards. (anneka_neko asked for Roger really missing the snow so I...I umm, did the exact opposite! I will amend this in a future fic!)

Roger's foot is tapping out a staccato beat on the kitchen floor. The linoleum sticks slightly to the sole of his shoe every time he lifts it up, another little sound to cram into this tiny room. Rubber peeling against rubber, tap dripping into the sink, the irritable tick of the clock.

He doesn't think Hani won't come, because Hani _said_ he would come. He doesn't know why he asked Hani _here_ instead of somewhere anonymous and crowded and outdoors, a place he could wear sunglasses and a baseball cap, just a gut instinct on the phone that he'd followed and was starting to regret now.

It's the eighth of December and sixty-eight degrees outside. Roger used to miss snow but this year he's glad. He doesn't want to see the city covered up, as if when spring comes and the snow melts there's going to be something new there. It helps trick people into thinking they can make a fresh start just because the season's changed. But nothing _changes_.

Maybe you learn something. Get smarter. Get less stupid at least.

He tips his mug in his hand and frowns at the last drop of coffee rolling back and forth at the bottom. It should have been good coffee, except the cream curdled when he stirred it in and separated into little white flakes, turning the deep black liquid an ugly, murky brown. He drank it anyway. The cream hasn't gone bad, the coffee's just too strong or too hot or too bitter.

It's probably time to learn what's going wrong there. He's quick, he's _smart_. If this is going to be _home_ , if he is making that damn decision already, he can learn how to make the coffee here right.

Two words that make the fingers of his right hand ache. Smart. Home. He wonders how the debriefing would've played out back in the states. If it would've mattered. He knows enough about psych evaluations to fake it and Ed could probably have hand waved the whole thing if he asked. Doesn't mean the dreams would stop.

 _This is going to be home now,_ he thinks and slams the mug onto the table because there it is again, right there. Not enough like a memory, he has to go through it all over again every time. Feeling nauseous and muddled with the painkillers they had him hooked up to, the stiffness in his neck and the vague itch of his skin knitting itself back together and how the smell of Hani's cigar had made him think he might throw up.

Those were extreme test conditions alright and he'd worked out the whole thing right there while Hani looked on, pleased, because Roger was _smart_ , smarter than the usual Americans they sent. Not smart enough that he couldn't be played, just smart enough to . . . what? _Be of interest_ , Roger thinks. Smart enough to pay attention to.

So it wouldn't make a difference where he arranged to meet Hani, you couldn't distract him like that. If he was going to talk to you, he was going to _talk_ to you. And he can wear sunglasses even indoors if he wants but Hani will still be able to look at him and think, Roger's pretty certain, that he can see the _dar al-harb_ inside him – the pointless struggle against Hani's will, what Hani's wanted this whole time.

And he'll be proving Hani right when he called Amman _home_ while Roger was still lying in that hospital bed. At least he gets to prove Ed wrong at the same time.

Ed sent him a Christmas card. Ed sent him a copy of his family's _Christmas letter_. Both had been opened before he got them, an ex CIA agent in Jordan doesn't get the luxury of untampered mail. An agent like Roger doesn't get the luxury of ever being _ex_. Something Hani's been trying to show him ever since he said adiós to the agency almost one whole year ago. He knows what Ed would say about his letters being checked. Something like, _well that's what you get when you say goodbye to civilization,_ and the hypocrisy would never even occur to him. Roger's sure Ed really believes the rules are different when it comes to 'us' versus 'them', but Ed and Hani have more in common than either of them would probably like to think.

There's a snow scene on the card that Ed sent him. It makes him the opposite of homesick for America. He lived with Ed's voice in his ear for long enough that he can hear him, pitch perfect, when he reads - _Happy Holidays, buddy!_ It's the exclamation mark that gets him.

Roger's not so childish that proving Ed wrong has anything to do with taking Hani up on his offer. Ed didn't understand why he wanted to leave in the first place, he definitely wouldn't understand why he's been treading water out in the middle of the desert for the past year.

The family letter is all about where the 'Hoffman clan' are going on vacation, the neighbourhood barbecue back in August, how Timmy's doing on the school softball team. It's obvious that Ed's wife wrote it and he thinks she probably doesn't even know that Ed sent it to him. His jaw feels tense after he reads it the first time, head aching from trying to figure out why Ed sent it at all.

Four and half pages of twelve point type and if Roger didn't know if was from Ed, he'd never be able to figure it out from that. It's about Ed and his family so it's not really about Ed at all. Roger wonders about Hani's family sometimes and he's seen Hani's wife more than once. She's exactly the sort of person he would have imagined Hani would be married to and there's something there that strikes him just like the strange unfamiliarity of Ed's letter.

It's not the kind of life he wants. Compartmentalized. He thought with Aisha . . . but that didn't last and that's another thing Hani was right about. He would've had to earn her love but in the end he didn't know how and then he didn't know _why,_ just that before he'd _known_ he was going to die in that little room she'd seemed like some kind of hope and after, after everything was different.

Before, he trusted Hani. Now? Now-

There's a knock on the door.


End file.
